Business Continuity Awards: a decade of diligence
1st April 2009
Continuity Insurance and Risk (CIR) are hosting the 2009 Business Continuity Awards. Since the last Business Continuity Awards, they contrast how the focus of business continuity has moved on from ten years ago, such as the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, dot com boom incomparable to the current economic concerns such as SARS, foot and mouth, cyber crime, questionable financial practices of global corporations, etc.CIR predicts organisations, in the future, will seek to address external aspects of continuity planning, including cooperation between businesses and the emergency services following serious incidents.
According to CIR, Marsh’s Martin Caddick believes the industry is entering a new phase, with multinational manufacturing and logistics companies beginning to assume the mantle of leadership from the financial sector.
“The industry will be led by companies putting parts of their businesses into countries like China and India. A lot of the disruption risk is now outside your direct control: if you have a manufacturing plant in China it may be a joint operation or owned by a third party”
Caddick goes on further to say:
“It’s now about pushing business continuity much more into the risk management world. Banks have to deal with very complex risk management, but their treatment of risk is usually very fragmented: insurance does a bit, you have a business continuity department, and operational risk, and they’re all separate. In manufacturing it’s all being pushed together.”
Bruce Mann, director of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, supports the above position and says :
“I would think the most important things to aim for in the next ten years would be first of all for organisations which aren’t doing [business continuity ] to do it – there are still some holes,” he says. “And the crucial thing is organisations going down their supply chains to make sure they’re resilient. That would be two very good outcomes for the next ten years.”
The awards will be presented in the Great Room at Grosvenor House on Wednesday 27 May 2009.